Disclaimer: VLFV uses eBay&#;s affiliate program and as an eBay Partner, we may be compensated if you make a purchase. Our mission is to keep all content free and accessible, so if you&#;d like to support what we do, feel free to purchase your lenses via the links in this article, at no additional cost to you.
If you are getting into vintage lenses and want to build an affordable set that will be usable in every shooting environment, this guide is for you. I&#;ve been teasing about my &#;$ Zeiss Mini-Cine Set&#; on social networks a lot, but it&#;s finally the time to take an in-depth look at what has gone into creating this set.
At the core of my set are 5 Carl Zeiss Jena M42 full frame lenses, which can be adapted to most mounts including EF, Sony E & MFT. They are great for full frame cameras and S35 cameras, especially when combined with a focal reducer. So Let&#;s take a closer look at each lens.
Flektogon 20mm F2.8 &#; the widest lens in the set. For some of you it might not sound wide, but on full frame or S35 with a focal reducer, it&#;s wide enough for most needs. It&#;s a very respected lens in vintage lens community. It has excellent optical quality as you can see in my &#;Vintage 20mm Shootout&#;. Like most vintage lenses it&#;s not perfect. While it&#;s pretty sharp in the middle of the frame even wide open, you need to step down to F4-5.6 for good edge sharpness. Even though it&#;s the most expensive lens in this set, it definitely worth its price, especially because there is no 28mm in my set. While a Carl Zeiss Jena 29mm does exist, I believe it was it&#;s a rebranded Pantcon lens which itself is based on a Mayer Optic 29mm F2.8 and while it&#;s not a bad lens, I don&#;t feel that it&#;s optical performance matches the rest of the set, especially wide open, but if you really need this focal length, it might be a good option to consider.
Specs:
Flektogon 35mm F2.4 &#; Not much needs to be said about this lens. It&#;s well known for its excellent performance and I will much rather use this lens than the 29mm I mentioned above. It&#;s half a stop faster too, which is a nice little bonus. Possibly my favourite lens in this set!
Specs:
Pancolar 50mm F1.8 &#; No set can is complete without a nice 50mm and as it&#;s often the case, this 50mm is the fastest lens in the set, making it a great choice for low light and bokelisios shots. Funnily enough it&#;s also one of the cheapest lenses in this set, but if budget is really tight and you don&#;t care about that extra stop of light, the Tessar 50mm F2.8 is also an excellent choice (my review).
Specs:
Biometar 80mm F2.8 &#; Now this lens is a bit of a dark horse of this set. It&#;s the only lens here that isn&#;t natively an M42 lens. While it might look exactly like all the others, it&#;s actually a medium format lens with a P6 mount, but thankfully can put an M42 adapter on top of it, or you can even go straight to EF mount if you wish to. The main reason why I decided to include this lens instead of a Pancolar 80mm F1.8 is the price. This lens can be bought for under $100 while Pancolar 80mm would cost anywhere between $600 and $800 completely destroying the budget for this set, but if you budget can stretch, Pancolar 80mm is an excellent lens; otherwise Biometar 80mm that I have is also an amazing lens for the money.
Specs:
optec supply professional and honest service.
Sonnar 135mm F3.5 &#; Slowest and cheapest lens in this set, so it&#;s a bit of a bonus for these occasions when you need something tighter. While it might not sound impressive on paper, it&#;s an excellent optical performer and definitely work considering, but if you&#;d rather keep all your set at F2.8 or faster and you have some extra cash to spend, then you can always go for Biometar 120mm F2.8, which is same as Biometar 80mm is a medium format lens that will match the rest of the set very well!
Specs:
So here is our final $ &#;Mini-Cine&#; set: (ebay links below)
There are of course a few lenses you can want to swap out or add to this set, from 29mm F2.8 which I&#;ve mentioned to in the video, to Tessar 50mm F2.8, which is literally the cheapest Zeiss lens out there, so if you&#;re on a tight budget, it&#;s a good option too. If your budget though has no limits, then Pancolar 80mm F1.8 would be a star of this set, but as mentioned in the video, it&#;s pretty expensive. If you want to keep your set at F2.8 or under, then you can swap out the Sonnar 135mm F3.5 for the slightly more expensive Biometar 120mm F2.8, which is a medium format lens, same as the 80mm F2.8 I&#;ve chosen for my set. Lastly, if you want something with even more reach, then Sonnar 180mm F2.8 and Sonnar 300mm F4 lenses will give you exactly that at a very reasonable price tag. You can find all the relevant ebay links below.
Now let&#;s move on to the mods. There are some many things you can do and so many products you can buy, but here are the parts I&#;ve used for my lenses.
As mentioned in my video, I&#;ve done my de-clicking with EKOECamera in London, but if you are in US I highly recommend Duclos Lenses, well known for their top quality service and for my Canadian friends, SimmodLens will provide amazing service at really affordable prices.
Conclusion: I truly believe that it would be very difficult to find a nicer, more versatile set of lenses for $, so I highly recommend that you check these beauties out while they&#;re still cheap. I hope you found this guide useful and I&#;m looking forward to seeing your own mini-cine sets &#;
SUPPORTING FUTURE CONTENT
I do my best to make this website a great resource for people interested in vintage lenses, so I hope you&#;ve enjoyed this post and it will help you with your future lens choices. If find VLFV to be a useful resource, please check out my Patreon page to see if you can make a difference, or if you prefer the good old paypal donations, you can do that here.
If you can&#;t support VLFV directly, but you shop on ebay, please use the ebay links you find in this blog or bookmark and use this link if you want to buy anything else on eBay.com and this link if you shop on eBay.co.uk. You will not be spending a penny more using these links, but will be helping anyway, because EPN (eBay Partner Network) will pay out a small percentage from any purchase you make, which .in turn will support new content on www.vintagelensesforvideo.com. Thank you for your support!
Contact us to discuss your requirements of Custom Micro Lenses. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.